Family Christmases and evil tourists

By AMY ONTAI

Published 10:00 am, Tuesday, December 27, 2011

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Merry Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanza/Other non-denominational means of ripping up trees and piling up presents in your general vicinity! The holidays are my favorite time of the year, for reasons which include but are not limited to cake, cookies, chocolates, pies, candies and black Santas. I also like the holidays because I get to take off from Nazi home school (hooray!) and spend some quality time with the fam.

Unfortunately, my family tends to live in far-off places, which forces me to endure the greatest horror of the holidays: travel. I don't know why people have to be such butt-faces in airports. I mean, come on, it's stinkin' Christmas! But no, here's all the other rushed and disgruntled airport-dwellers, shoving me out of the way and causing me to break off from the rest of my family, which they won't even notice until they're at the gate and I'm still about two terminals away stuck behind the Japanese tourists.

And I don't understand why people will only take the aisle seats in open boarding. It's like, newsflash, that technique isn't going to magically obtain three open seats for your selfish little self. It's only going to get two giant butts shoved in your face as people try to wiggle their way into the window and middle seat. Plus, I'm pretty sure that'll get a lot of "accidental" Cokes spilled on you when the hostess comes by with the drinks, if you get my drift.

And what's up with TSA? This one TSA guy told me to stand on the little X-ray thingy and then asked me what I liked about Vegas, since I was wearing my "I heart Vegas" shirt. I was totally paralyzed, because I thought that if I answered wrong, he'd drag me off into a dark room and then dump all the confiscated sunscreen on me while shouting "What do you know about al Queada!?" until I started going hysterical or passed out. But he was just making conversation, which really confused me because I was told that TSA will totally sound the alarm if you try to talk/joke with them.

And then there's the whole "relatives" part of the holidays. Whenever you're staying with relatives, trying to find anything in their house is like playing Russian roulette. You think you're opening the door to the bathroom when BAM! you walk in on your half-naked uncle doing pilates.

And then there's the whole, "Oh no, no need," rule that comes up when you spend time with your extended family. When someone tells you, "Oh no, no need," they actually mean the exact opposite. For example, an ONNN move is typically pulled right after dinner, at the time everyone's just about to go home when your mom feels the need to say, "Oh, do you want us to do the dishes?" And then before you can make a break for the door, the ONNN method has already been employed, and suddenly, you're elbow-deep in greasy dishwater fighting the urge to pass out after eating twice your weight in grandma's cookies at dinner.

Of course, while I have complained a lot in this Christmas-y article, I truly am not a Grinch. I love enjoying the holidays with my family, because they, like me, are kind of insane, and we always have a good time together. So while you may end up having to push through all of the Hello Kitty-clad, non English-speaking foreigners to get to your gate before your family takes off on a trans-Atlantic flight without you, and you may have to endure endless ONNN torture, you should never lose sight of what Christmas really is: celebrating the birth of lil' eight-pound baby Jesus with all your loved ones and a ton of outrageous Christmas light displays.

So to everyone with travel woes or crazy relatives, let me give you a piece of advice: there's cookies at the end, just stick it out for a little while longer.